


miles to go

by deniigiq



Series: Inimitable Verse [15]
Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Disability, Disabled Character, Found Families, Gen, Homelessness, I'm not fucking done with this trope leave me alone, M/M, Matt find a cat, Mentees, Mentors, Multi, Poverty, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, briefly, undocumented immigrant, we all knew he would find another eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-16 03:11:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20175919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: Sam breathed out and looked down at his bruised knuckles.Daredevil was known to be unfriendly. Hostile. Borderline bitey, according to those idiots on Reddit who had tried to interact with him. Hannah noticed his silence and then looked back at his hands and then up at him.Her face folded in on itself all over.“Sammy,” she said.“Daredevil it is,” he breathed.“Sammy, please don’t do this.”(Sam sets out to San Francisco to find himself a devil.)





	miles to go

**Author's Note:**

> Decided that while I was at it with the Sam content, I'd post this puppy. 
> 
> This is the backstory behind Sam's entry into in the Inimitable Verse. I would recommend folks read that one to get why this diverts from the comics, but you don't have to if you're willing to suspend your attachment to canon. 
> 
> There are references to some pretty heavy issues below including: self-harm, poverty, homelessness, undocumented immigration + social issues which often accompany that, and the development of a disability. Please do what you need to to keep yourselves safe.

Sam had finally worked up the courage to going out looking gone for someone—anyone—to learn from and he’d found a whole lot of nothing. For a city once full of vigilantes, NYC had sure felt quiet those nights.

It didn’t make sense.

Sam read the news religiously. He even read all the tabloids. He followed the Spidey-spotting account on twitter and the Castle-catchers and the Red-riders and all the other folks trying to map the locations of vigilantes on the day to day, but no matter how many accounts he’d followed or papers he’d read, he never managed to be in the right place at the right time to catch these fuckers.

It was like trying to catch butterflies without a net.

It was like trying to hold water in a sieve.

Difficult, he was saying here. Hard as hell.

Aggravating at the best.

Hannah hadn’t known about his not-quite new, and definitely not shiny deathwish until he’d thrown in the towel and decided that he’d just do it himself. He didn’t need no Mr. Miyagi to fight crime. He had this.

Turned out he did not.

Hannah called him an idiot and asked him what the fuck was wrong with him while she hauled him out of the gutter and back towards their apartment.

He didn’t have an answer for her.

Once the door to their home closed behind them, she asked him, at a volume uncomfortable for Sam’s fragile pride, if he was really that much of a fucking idiot that he didn’t know that Spidey had vanished into thin air just a few months previous.

“He only comes back during the school holidays, so everyone’s saying he’s some kind of college kid,” She spat.

And god_damnit_. Come on, Spidey. You don’t need to study. You’re Spiderman.

“Sam,” Hannah sighed into her hands.

“I knoooow,” he whined. “But listen. I’m doing this. I’ve got to. It’s in my soul, I can feel it—”

“That’s called heartburn,” Hannah snipped. Sam ignored her; he’d had plenty of practice.

“—But if I’m gonna do it right, I need a Mr. Miyagi. And Spidey is—”

“Hot,” Hannah said.

“Talented,” Sam corrected, “Experienced.”

“And hot.”

“You don’t know he’s hot.”

“Spidey-crush,” Hannah pronounced in the worst kind of sing-song way.

“Rude.”

“Spidey-crush,” Hannah sang.

“I do not—alright, look,” Sam huffed, “Mr. Miyagi. Find me one if you’re so knowledgeable.”

“Oh, I have an even better idea.”

“Hannah—”

“Why don’t we _not_ become a creature of the night, hmm? Oh my god, Hannah, you are so smart. Gee, don’t I know it, ” Hannah said, putting on the most insulting imitation of Sam’s voice ever in the middle of that shit.

“I’m doing it,” He sighed.

“You’re gonna die,” Hannah snapped. “Or you’re gonna get arrested and then deported. And _then_ you’re gonna die. Is that what you want?”

Well.

No. But—

“Because that is what this behavior is suggesting to me, Sammy. You see that, don’t you?” Hannah snarled.

Well, yeah. But—

“So it’s gonna take some fucking convincing for you to demonstrate to me that this is not self-harm.”

See.

The problem was that it kind of was exactly that.

Hannah eventually relented, although that might have been through pure tenacity alone. Sam could keep up the annoying-big-brother schtick for ages if it meant that he had someone who was with the times helping him find his mentor. Hannah, on the other hand, seemed to think that if she indulged Sam in this for long enough, that he’d finally figure out how fucking dumb he was all on his own and would give up this pipe dream in the name of making another bastardized Roomba friend for her.

She had no idea how truly dumb he was, though, and he wasn’t about to tell her.

In the meantime, she did have some good points. He’d give her that at least. 

“Sam, you cannot go into this expecting them to become your mentor,” Hannah chided. “At most, you’ll get a kick in the ass and a training lesson or two. People like this—Spidey, Hawkeye, Daredevil—they aren’t teachers, man. They’re just assholes. And I imagine that they’re stuck up, megalomaniac assholes. Who else could possibly think that they are the Chosen One meant to defend this city?”

“It’s not about being the Chosen One,” Sam said. “It’s about doing what you think is right to the best of your ability. And these guys, they’ve got it all, Hannah. Moral compass _and _ability.”

Hannah gave him a dead-eyed stare over her laptop which he realized that he may have possibly earned.

“Most of the time,” he qualified.

“You’re a disgusting fanboy,” Hannah informed him.

He was maybe kind of a fanboy. But that was allowed. He was allowed to have heroes. To admire folks who wanted to stick up for the little guy. He was allowed to want to be the person he needed someone else to be for people like him.

The broke. The hungry. The working hard. The working harder. The never not working, it seemed.

But the longer he chased this dream, the more expensive he realized it was, and in more than just cash.

Hannah had bad news for him.

“Only guy who’s been spotted lately is Deadpool,” she announced over her laptop. “Spidey’s been gone for six consecutive months—probably fraternizing with sorority girls—and Daredevil’s. I dunno man, people say that he’d becoming more and more erratic. Sounds like he’s spiraling into a breakdown if you know what I mean. But hey, did you know there’s two Hawkeyes?”

“_Two _Hawkeyes?” Sam repeated, squatting to see over Hannah’s shoulder. And sure enough, there were two very different purple suits on the screen.

“One of them’s up and gone,” Hannah read from paragraph of text under the image, “The girl. The old guy—the original Hawkeye, I guess, is apparently a fucking building manager in Brooklyn, so good luck with that, bro.”

“O…kay, so maybe they aren’t glamorous people,” Sam said. “But that isn’t a big thing. I’m not a glamorous person either. And I’m not looking for resources. Just like, guidance.”

Hannah turned around to give him a very familiar and equally horrible dead-eyed stare. He held his hands up to block its power.

She looked around them, the clever scourge.

“They. Are. _Unstable_,” she sounded out just for Sam. “Un-Sta-Ble. You hear me? You want it in Mandarin or Cantonese or?”

“They are unstable right _now_,” Sam said over her piss-poor attitude. “And who hasn’t been there? I’m sure that, with time, they will all, as a group—a team even--become more stable and very Mr. Miyagi-like. So, maybe the answer is just to wait a little bit. Build my strength. Build a reputation with what I’ve got.”

Hannah could cut someone with those eyes. Or stab them. Or smite them. Whatever she wanted. There were a lot of options here and she was unstoppable.

“Sam, you’re going to die,” she said. “What kind of wood do you want for your coffin?”

“Oh, I was thinking cremation, actually—”

“SAM.”

“Okay, okay. Not funny. I get it.”

Sam gave it six months. And the team. The crew. His people and his adventures out into the unknown? Just got shitter.

“This is not ideal,” he informed Hannah as he washed out scrapes in the sink.

“Yep,” Hannah said ruthlessly.

“Dear sibling,” Sam said to his cuts. “I have been beaten and injured. A little bit of sympathy would be beautiful.”

“Fresh out,” Hannah said.

Ugh.

Typical.

“Oh, hey, did you know Daredevil’s up and gone from the city?” Hannah threw over her shoulder like a wet rag.

“WHAT?”

“Yeah, he’s gone-gone. Well-gone. Not a trace of him for nearly a month now. He musta had it up to here with the new DA and finally realized that HK is virtually unsavable.”

“Nowhere is unsavable.”

Hannah stopped typing and looked back at him by the sink. Sam didn’t want to look back into her eyes for fear that he might see pity.

Hannah made a soft noise and then went back to typing.

“Spidey’s still gone too,” she said, “He came back for a week and ran himself ragged from the looks of it. There’s a video of him getting the tar beat of him with a baseball bat. He’s lookin’ kind of lean. Probably that college diet, you know. Man cannot survive on ramen alone.”

Yikes. Spidey was busy then. Alright, that was him out. There had to be more vigilantes than DD and Spidey though. There was always Hawkeye, but Sam had stopped by the property alleged to be managed by Hawkeye and it was.

Or rather, he was.

Hm.

Hawkeye was probably clinically depressed. Sam hadn’t seen much of him, but he’d learned a little from his open window and the dumpster outside his house. He cried over his dog a lot. And ate almost solely pizza and drank a frankly concerning amount of coffee despite never leaving the house, and like.

Yeah.

Not exactly appealing mentor material. Sam kind of saw why the guy’s last mentee had bounced. Good on her for putting up with that for as long as she had.

“You can always become a contract killer,” Hannah offered. “Deadpool made the headlines twice this week.”

Um. Consider this, however: no.

“You gotta keep an open mind, Sammy,” Hannah said with jazz hands.

“How about Cap, you think I’ve got a shot with Cap?” he asked. “Or Ironman? Didn’t Spidey do some early work with Ironman? If I go there and impress Ironman with my charm and genius, maybe he’ll—”

“Call the cops, or better yet, ICE,” Hannah said.

“Okay, fine. Banner, then! I could learn to—”

“Smash. What a skillset. Especially for a guy the size of a hamster.”

“Okay, one? Rude. I am the size of a guinea pig. And _two_—”

“Hey, go get mentored by Frank Castle,” Hannah said. “That’ll be fun. It’ll be like joining the marines but worse.”

A long pause.

“I am too beautiful for the marines, Hannah,” Sam pointed out.

Hannah weighed that with her hands.

Alright. Spidey was out. Deadpool out. Frank Castle out. Hawkeye out. Daredevil out. Who the fuck was left in this city??

No wonder everything was going up in smoke, this was absurd.

“I dunno, bro. Guess you gotta wait,” Hannah chanted.

UGH UGH UGH

“Yooo. People say Daredevil’s showed up on the West Coast!!”

Sam whacked his head against the coffee table. Then scrambled out from between the couch and his assailant at the news.

He rubbed his head while Hannah read the article.

“Lookit him go,” Hannah said, playing the report’s accompanying video clip.

Daredevil smashed through people in San Francisco without missing a beat. He was acrobatic. He was efficient. He missed plenty of hits, but caught just as many and when he went down, he always got back up.

Always.

Sam breathed out and looked down at his bruised knuckles.

Daredevil was known to be unfriendly. Hostile. Borderline bitey, according to those idiots on Reddit who had tried to interact with him.

Well. Could Sam really call them idiots if he was about to do what he was thinking he was?

Hannah noticed his silence and then looked back at his hands and then up at him.

Her face folded in on itself all over.

“Sammy,” she said.

“Daredevil it is,” he breathed.

“Sammy, please don’t do this.”

It’s now or never.

The trip to San Francisco was one long panic attack interspersed with long deep breaths of boredom. Hannah was freaking out back home. She texted him after couple of hours. She’d made a list of relatives they had back in China in addition to a list of immigration lawyers out in California.

He wanted to tell her she wasn’t exactly being subtle here if the NSA were watching but doing this made her feel better and so he let it happen.

Stepping off the plane in San Francisco felt kind of wild.

People here were allegedly more accepting of people like him.

People here were more chilled out than people in New York.

There was no street pizza.

There were flowers every-fucking-where.

He got to his hostel and settled in for some research.

Where to find a Daredevil?

Daredevil spent a lot of time bouncing around the place on the map called the Tenderloin. It seemed like he was attracted in some weird way to poverty. Or perhaps he was attracted to poverty the way that crime was attracted to poverty.

Sam headed that way and found on three consecutive nights, no damn Daredevil. Not so much as a hair. He kind of wished this coast was as obsessed with its wayward residents as New York. He could really use a DD-Watch right now.

But alas, DD refused to be watched. For a whole week.

Sam couldn’t keep on going like this, swinging between research and nocturnal excursions. He only had so much in savings. He needed a job and a base of locations.

The folks in Chinatown were very helpful. He went an picked up a quick position bus-boying at a restaurant and found another long-stay hostel. He didn’t know how long he was going to give this crazy dream-maybe-nightmare yet. Hannah said no more than a month. He thought that it depended on how quickly he found Daredevil.

Sometimes, two months into your crazy cross-country journey, just when you’re about ready to give up, fate finds you.

And if you’re lucky, fate keeps you from cracking your head open from nine stories up.

And if you’re extra super lucky, fate says, ‘You got heart, kid,’ like some kind of boxer from _Rockie_. Or was that _Hercules_? It didn’t matter.

Daredevil thought that he had heart.

Sam did not cry. No one had seen anything. There was no evidence. Even if he did become perhaps a teeny bit desperate for Daredevil’s approval from there on out.

Hannah could not believe that he’d actually found the abominable DD. She was astounded.

“Who even _are _you?” she demanded over the phone exactly twenty minutes after Sam had gotten back to the hostel after getting the snot beaten out of him by his horn-headed Mr. Miyagi.

“He says I got heart, Hannah,” he hissed into the receiver, trying to be quiet. “He _says_ I got heart. I could cry. I’m gonna cry.”

“Dude, is he weird?” Hannah asked.

“So fucking weird,” Sam said. “He can see me in the suit.”

“What?”

“I said—”

“No. No, that doesn’t make sense. Sam, you’re—I—no one can see you in the suit. It’s invisible. That’s the definition of invisible.”

Sam didn’t really know what to say to that besides, “Well, he can.”

“He’s gotta be enhanced,” Hannah said.

“Oh no, definitely,” Sam agreed. “He walks weird. He kind of leads with his nose. I think he’s got a smell thing.”

Hannah made a noise of disgust.

“Come on, DD,” she groused. “All the enhancements in the world and you pick the nose one? Seriously, man?”

Sam laughed and then hushed himself out of respect for the other sleepers sharing the room.

“I’ll call you later this week,” he promised. “DD says he’s gonna teach me how to move like I mean it.”

“Kinky.”

“Bye, Hannah. Love you.”

“Love you, too. Don’t get a Devil-crush.”

Sometimes fate really fucking hates you and the place you work at goes out of business.

He had to choose between eating and sleeping while he looked for a new job and the stress of sleeping at cafes and the cost of West Coast food really showed in his and Daredevil’s training. He couldn’t keep up. He couldn’t keep up like he had been able to for the last two months.

And Daredevil noticed. Of course he did. He was the most perceptive person Sam had ever encountered. He was fucking smart. Not just smart. _Fucking_ smart, and he literally had all the moves.

Sam had learned so much.

But now he was slacking and he couldn’t help slacking because he was hungry. And he couldn’t help being hungry because he couldn’t be sleeping up high in the open anymore. It was too cold. The roofs of the houses were too thin. There were very, _very_ angry seagulls and pigeons around these parts.

Something had to give.

So Sam had to prioritize roofs over eating for now.

The fact that Daredevil noticed was perhaps the most hurtful thing that he ever could have done. Obviously, he couldn’t know how badly his judgement stung. But still.

Sam promised he’d do better.

Daredevil told him to go home and take a shower.

He wished he could, man. He really wished he could. But trying to get clean in this week’s hostel’s bathroom would be like scrubbing a pig as it stood in a pile of shit. It was more sanitary to scrub up in the sink.

He got another job, thank Jesus. It wasn’t great, but it was income. And income meant food and income meant sleeping somewhere with a bathtub in its bathroom and there truly was no greater luxury in the world at the minute.

He worked and he slept and he trained and he worked and he slept and he trained for what felt like ages until Daredevil turned to him one night and said, ‘Let’s split up.’

Pride feels like hot, milky coffee on a cold day.

It was cold. So _fucking_ cold. Not New York cold, but still cold.

Sam’s fingers did not like to be out in the cold this long, callouses or no.

Daredevil wrapped his hands in boxing tape for him.

He slapped a hand against Sam’s cheek and told him to eat more, he was getting a little skinny.

Sam couldn’t be working this hard for this little pay. It was killing him. He couldn’t be picking up this many shifts. He had to sleep. He needed to sleep because he needed to heal and he couldn’t heal when he was moving his arms and his back and his abs, cracking open scabs and irritating swollen muscles.

He needed to sleep.

Fuck.

He needed to sleep.

He fell asleep waiting for DD once in December and woke up around midnight with a coat thrown over him.

The embarrassment felt like biting into the pith of a lime.

DD had gone on without him.

He didn’t cry. But it was a close thing.

He nearly lost his job because he nearly threw hands with the boss. He was told to get back in line or to leave and he couldn’t afford—literally couldn’t afford—to lose this job. So he bit his tongue and he got back in line.

But that night he did cry because there are things in the world which hurt so much worse than a fist to the stomach.

He thought that he was getting sick. He had a cough that hadn’t gone away for a week and a sore throat. He covered that shit up at work, but it definitely made it worse.

He needed to sleep. But he couldn’t sleep because he had to work and he had to train and he had to go out with DD.

But.

But.

He was so tired.

Hannah was worried. Hannah told him that he’d been gone long enough. To come home. She missed him. He wasn’t learning anything anymore, he was just getting experience now.

But that wasn’t true. DD taught him new things everyday. New ways of seeing and listening and fighting. New ways of predicting things.

DD asked him to think harder and faster than he’d ever had to in his life and the joy of having the opportunity and encouragement to do so was just so…addicting.

Sam never wanted it to stop.

He had to call in sick.

He couldn’t afford to call in sick, but he had to sleep.

He fell asleep again waiting for DD and woke up at two am to the guy crouching over him with a hand pressed up against his forehead.

“You’re sick, kiddo,” DD said, not unkindly. “Let me take you home. You need to rest.”

No.

No.

No.

Absolutely not. If Daredevil saw who Sam was outside the suit, outside the mask, in the daylight, he’d never let Sam train with him again. If DD knew about the hours and the hostel—Sam wasn’t ashamed to be poor. And DD had to have some kind of history of poverty given the way he gravitated towards it.

But just the thought of this man knowing that Sam was suffering, honestly, and the thought of DD seeing that vulnerability and bearing witness to Sam’s otherwise pretty fucking pitiful existence--he couldn’t.

Call it pride. Call it deceit. It didn’t matter.

Sam had made Blindspot to be more than who he was. He knew now that he really could be that guy. He had been for nearly five months.

The longest five months of his life.

“It’s okay,” he told Daredevil. “I can get home on my own.”

Home was a mattress at a hostel.

Home was two meals a day.

Home was the duffle bag of clothes that somehow costed a whole hour of work to wash and dry.

Home was his phone.

Home was tired.

Home was sick.

Home started to fall apart after the first bullet smashed through his thigh.

He hadn’t experienced this kind of pain before. He’d experienced scrapes and punches and stabbings, but this? This was a whole new level.

DD wasn’t taking any chances.

DD wanted to take him to a hospital.

He begged God for Daredevil not to take him to a hospital. Pleaded. He couldn’t afford those payments. He couldn’t even afford a hostel.

DD didn’t understand because Sam had never told him. But something about his behavior must have triggered something in DD’s unknowable head because he took Sam to a clinic instead. Somewhere where people didn’t ask any questions.

They pulled out the bullet and Sam cried. Screamed and cried.

He felt five years old.

He felt three years old.

He couldn’t stop shaking and he couldn’t stop crying and the whole world was screaming. And then there were arms around him and then someone warm and someone solid and he could only clutch at them and cry and cry and _cry_.

Just make it stop. He would do anything to make it stop.

The solid body with solid arms rubbed circles into his back and didn’t let him go, despite the snot and the tears and the noise.

He woke up later, alone, and blearily asked the lady checking on him who’d been with him last night.

“Oh, that was Daredevil,” she said.

Oh.

That was Daredevil.

Just, you know. Daredevil.

Sam couldn’t work with a bullet wound. He called his boss and explained that he’d been shot in a drive by shooting.

His boss said that that was a shame. He didn’t let him keep the job, though.

No work meant no money which meant no hostel.

No hostel meant no sleep and Sam was just so tired.

He was so, so tired.

Daredevil found him hiding somewhere just to sleep for a minute before he went out job hunting again. Sam didn’t know he was there for a long time. He didn’t even wake up.

When he did wake up, it was to the dents around red eyes, and DD asked him why he slept outside so much.

He lied and said that he found comfort in the smell of fog and grass. He learned later that Daredevil always knew when people were lying. In that moment, though, DD settled in next to him and said that he could never sleep outside. It was too noisy. Sam told him that was a shame.

DD stayed quiet for a long time, then asked when was the last time Sam had eaten and he took too long to remember.

Then DD asked him where he worked and he didn’t answer right enough or fast enough or whatever it was that the guy’s lie detector brain was looking for.

The lie, for whatever reason, resulted in Daredevil holding out to Sam a job offer with some folks that he happened to know who were looking for a paralegal.

“You’re smart, Sam. I’m sure you’d pick it up quickly,” DD told him.

Yeah, no.

That wasn’t the problem.

“Thank you,” Sam said instead of ‘I don’t have a social security number. I don’t have a bank account out here. I don’t have health insurance. I don’t have a permanent address. I don’t even have a US ID.”

He kept the card DD gave him, though. The kindness made his chest warm.

“Sam, did you check in with my friends?” DD asked him about a week later. “I asked and they hadn’t heard from you yet.”

Sam was tired. Sam was hungry. Sam was cold and so he didn’t really have the fucking patience for this.

He snapped. Got mad. Laid it out. Finally. After nearly six months of this working relationship. It took DD by surprise, but that brought with it only a miniscule flicker of satisfaction. Only a flicker because the facts were just flat out painful.

Sam was cold. Sam was hungry. Sam didn’t have a constant roof over his head. He couldn’t find a decent paying job with a decent, humane boss. He couldn’t work in most places. He didn’t have a US ID. He didn’t have a social security number or health insurance or anything like that.

He was undocumented, DD. This was his fucking life.

He was doomed to be cold and hungry and miserable everywhere he went and there was no option of going back to anywhere or anything because ‘back’ meant nothing. _Nothing._ No one. Sam had come to this country at five years old. He didn’t have any schooling. He didn’t have a degree.

He had nothing here and he’d have nothing in China and he would rather have nothing in the same country as his mom and his sister than be legal, but no one to anyone in China.

He was just _tired_, DD.

He was just so fucking tired. That’s why he slept outside. Besides it being free, it was the only place people couldn’t talk over him or judge him.

He was just so tired. Of the work. Of the pain. Of the fear. Of the pity.

He was.

He was.

Sorry.

That he wasn’t good enough. That he’d never be good enough.

He was so, so sorry.

This was a mistake. He should just go home. Go back to working at Columbia. As a fucking janitor. At least they knew him there.

DD said nothing for a long, long time and then stood up and gestured for Sam to stand up with him. He drew a thumb across Sam’s face and wiped away tears and said,

“Samuel. You have never been stronger.”

And Sam couldn’t do anything but cry and think about how much of a lie that was.

“Sam, listen to me,” DD said in his hero voice. The one Sam heard him use with scared kids. “I have never met someone like you. You are so strong. And you are so worthy of the highest praise, sweetheart. No, look at me. It’s going to be okay. Just let me help you, just this one time, okay? Let me help you.”

He’d never wanted to be saved by some white guy with red in his beard. He’d never asked to be someone’s project.

But there are lines between pride and survival. And just this once, Sam was going to let this happen.

DD’s people were kind. They were amazing. They were everyday savior people, unglamorous really, and they joked and they laughed and their firm was so warm. And they offered Sam open arms, despite his many problems.

He didn’t know anything about law, but he found he could learn it. That that knowledge was useful. He found that a job didn’t have to be customer service. Instead, it could be community service. He could be treated like a person and asked to do things with ‘pleases’ and ‘thank yous’ bracketing those requests.

He learned a couple of weeks into the job that Mr. Nelson was recovering from brain cancer. That was why he was always so tired. That’s why Mr. Murdock hounded him about finishing meals and doing too much work.

Mr. Nelson was somewhat fragile at the moment, which Ms. McDuffie assured Sam was not usually the case.

“In a couple of months, you’ll see,” she threatened.

But Sam didn’t want to wait a couple of months. Mr. Nelson was so kind and gentle. He was vicious to Mr. Murdock and he schemed with Ms. McDuffie and he was so warm to Sam. Always concerned about whether he was eating enough or sleeping okay. If Sam made the mistake of looking sad or cold, Mr. Nelson would sneak up behind him with an afghan or a quilt and would run away before Sam could throw it back onto him.

It was about a month before Sam realized that when Mr. Nelson referred to his husband, with the usual uncalled for irritation, he was, in fact, referring to Mr. Murdock. Sam only figured this out because once, Mr. Nelson was having a grand bitch after closing, rattling on and on about how spoiled his damn dogs were and calling his husband, ‘the most embarrassing motherfucker on this side of the Pacific,’ when Mr. Murdock stuck his head into the room beaming and said, ‘You rang? Motherfucker present.’

And Sam had had to artfully scoop his jaw up off the floor while concealing the fact that he felt like a massive idiot.

Duh.

_Duh._

“Can I meet your dogs?” he’d managed to ask Mr. Nelson who’d been very preoccupied with giving Mr. Murdock an earful for being overly generous with puppy treats.

Mr. Murdock was unrepentant.

“You can, but only if you like spoiled, horrible creatures,” Mr. Nelson sniffed.

“They are my everything,” Mr. Murdock said over him, then whacked at Mr. Nelson in the chest saying, “Pictures! Pictures! Show the young man pictures of our daughters.”

“Your daughters.”

“_Our _daughters.”

Sam loved the dogs. The dogs were so, so, _so_ sweet. One was an old lady puppy named Tuesday. She was so pale she was almost white. And the other was Hazel, a wild and crazy young thing with reddish fur who was a hellhound until she was in a guiding harness and the she was the best behaved dog in the whole damn world.

Mr. Murdock babytalked these dogs like nothing Sam had ever seen.

Mr. Nelson was disgusted at this. But he loved them all, he secretly did. Sam could see it in his eyes.

The Nelson-Murdock household, Sam saw after he was invited into it for a couple of dinners, was essentially these two married guys and their dogs and an incredible collection of houseplants which, Sam rapidly became aware that Mr. Murdock hated but Mr. Nelson loved.

They lived to balance each other, these two.

Sam didn’t quite know how Ms. McDuffie fit into this mix, but she was more thatncomfortable walking into the household and wandering around and stealing the dogs’ attention away from their favored father.

There was an ease here in this home which Sam missed from ages ago, when his family had all lived together.

Tuesday eventually picked him out of the group as her favorite and Sam had never been so honored.

It was another embarrassing week or so after that when Mr. Murdock asked Sam if he was ready to go out that night and Sam lied and said that he had an event to go to so that he could go out to meet DD. To tell him that he’d reached out and to thank him for the help. Really.

What a difference.

Mr. Murdock was confused, however, and asked him what the event was and then asked why Sam hadn’t mentioned it sooner.

Sam thought that that was a little invasive but didn’t say anything. Just said it was a music thing.

Then Mr. Murdock caught onto what was happening faster than Sam did and started laughing so hard he choked. He told Sam to stay right there and went back to get Mr. Nelson. He explained the situation and Mr. Nelson called him an idiot and then left.

Sam didn’t understand. But he also kind of had a schedule to keep here, so?

Mr. Murdock laughed hard again and told him to go.

That night was awkward.

Because DD stood behind Sam as he was looking out over the city and said nothing until Sam looked up and jumped.

Guy was in a weird mood.

He asked Sam if he was doing better.

And yes, much better.

He asked if he liked his new coworkers.

Yes, Sam liked them very much, thanks.

He asked if Sam liked the dogs.

And…yes. Yes, Sam liked the—how did he know Sam met the dogs?

And then the shit-eating grin came out. And Sam felt like someone had nailed him in the head with a sheet pan.

“_You_,” he said, leaping back.

And Mr. Fucking Murdock laughed and laughed and _laughed_. While Sam panicked and panicked and _panicked_.

Freaked the fuck out.

Mr. Murdock was blind. Mr. Murdock needed a cane. Or a dog. Or an arm. He couldn’t be—he couldn’t be—

Holy _fuck_. Hold on. Mr. Matthew Murdock was the one who’d thrown Wilson Fisk’s ass in jail and Mr. Franklin fucking Nelson from Hell’s Goddamn Kitchen had been right there on the other side and how the ever-loving _fuck_ had Sam missed all those damn warning signs? How had he forgotten these NYC reputations?

“We’re so charming,” Mr. Shithead Murdock said with a grandiose hand gesture. “We can charm anyone. Anyone who we cannot charm has no soul or is a kingpin.”

“You’re a blind lawyer,” Sam accused.

“You’re an undocumented Chinese acrobat,” Mr. Murdock accused right back.

A stalemate. They’d reached a stalemate.

Mr. Murdock peeled off his helmet and for the first time, Sam saw his cloudy blue eyes and that ginger mop paired with the shocking red of the Daredevil suit. Mr. Murdock’s eyes couldn’t find him. But they were crinkled at the edges and he looked as happy as he had just a few hours earlier in the office.

Sam was.

He was.

“Can I hug you?” he asked, voice breaking.

“No, no, my dear,” Mr. Murdock said in his warm baritone, “Can _I _hug you?”

Fucking yes. Obviously.

Mr. Murdock became just Matt and Matt was a fucking human disaster wrapped up in extraordinarily handsome packaging.

This guy was semi-functional at best.

He was a brilliant lawyer, an unbelievable fighter, and a superb dog-dad and all that shit in the middle didn’t matter to him so much.

Luckily for him, Mr. Nelson—or just Foggy to friends and family, which Sam was informed he was both of now--was competent enough at life in general to care about that middle shit for him.

This manifested itself in things like Foggy grabbing Matt’s lapels and threatening him on his life not to bust his fucking stitches. To which Matt would naturally say, “Anything you want, heart of mine.” So that he could immediately go fall down the stairs and rip all his stitches while Foggy did deep breathing exercises and then went to have a lie down.

Sam came to learn also that Ms. McDuffie, Kirsten, breezed into and out of this relationship with ease. She was happy to come in, steal Matt’s coffee and whatever dog he was riling up and then go kiss Foggy and walk out of the kitchen like she owned the place. The fact that no one questioned this was kind of stunning to Sam.

Especially since it was mind-bogglingly clear that Matt was highly attracted to Kirsten. And Kirsten to him. And yet both of them seemed happy to take the piss out of each other by agitating Foggy with their posturing.

Foggy just wanted these beautiful people to leave him and his plant hoarding and house renovations alone.

Sam loved Foggy with all his heart.

Foggy interrogated him as to where he was living and declared it not good enough and told Sam about the place in their downstairs neighbor’s place that would be going up for rent soon. Foggy further made that introduction and when Sam brought his lone dufflebag to ‘move in,’ Foggy had a brief stroke and informed him that he just needed ‘shit, you know? Kitsch? Crap?’

Foggy and Matt, it turned out, had actually grown up in Hell’s Kitchen and when Matt had started to notice the signs of Sam’s well, poverty, he’d started rattling at Foggy until they both came to the conclusion that there was something they could do about that.

They grew up poor. The both of them. Foggy from a small-business owning family. Matt with a single dad and then in foster care for eight years.

They got it. They just got it.

And they’d clawed their way tooth and nail into a position to give back to others and that’s what they’d dedicated their lives to doing. Matt in his maniac way on top of his actual human way and Foggy in his human way and by supporting Matt’s maniac way.

Sam asked them why they’d moved out west since everyone in Hell’s Kitchen adored them. And they’d shared an expression that Sam couldn’t understand how Matt sensed.

“I got sick,” Foggy said. “And it was hard to get better.”

“DA was giving me hell,” Matt said, “In both jobs. It just—there just comes a point, kid, where you gotta put your foot down and say something’s gotta give. And I decided that this time, it was my turn.”

It was hard to reconcile all those rumors and videos and stories of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen with this middle-aged redhead who baby talked his dogs and would baby talk those dogs until someone or something told him that that was enough.

It was hard to reconcile the empty blue eyes Matt hid behind sunglasses with the way that he moved his body through space.

It was hard to look at pictures of Foggy and Kirsten from back in New York, in a hospital, where Foggy looked like he was wasting away. Like he was dying.

Foggy wouldn’t look at those pictures.

They’d been taken just in case. Not because anyone wanted them.

Just in case.

These were people with lives who were just going it as best as they could, as long and as hard as they could.

And Sam felt awful sometimes for being around them because they started to feel like a family that he didn’t share with Hannah or his mom and they too, deserved this warmth.

The warmth didn’t last forever.

Things got complicated. Things got painful. Unimaginably terrifying. Empty and hollow and he took everything back about that bullet. There were things scarier than bullets.

The big one was darkness.

And then the one after that was grief.

Hannah asked him to come home, but he wasn’t sure what home was anymore. Was home back in a tiny shoebox apartment and shed in Chinatown, NYC? Or was home a closet room with a load of insane people and dogs upstairs in San Francisco?

Was home upstairs or outside?

Had home died with mom?

Or had he found a new home in a teacher and his husband and their friend?

Matt told him that home was a feeling, not a place. He tapped Sam’s heart with a knuckle and said that he and Foggy and Kirsten would be honored to be one of Sam’s homes but that he should retain, as much as he could, the home he found in his sister.

So Sam told her.

“I have two homes now. One in New York, with you, and one here in San Francisco. I’ll come home to New York one day, but until then, I’m going to stay here, if that’s okay?”

It was safer in San Francisco than New York at the moment and Foggy told Sam that that’s why Matt had brought him out West.

It was safer and they all deserved some rest and happiness for the time being.

“Oh, of course we’ll go back,” Foggy said. “Can’t take in too much sunshine, we’re New Yorkers, all of us. We need a good snow. But Matt’s promised me two years, so we’ll see what happens then.”

So now Sam was at home number two, holding onto Matt’s arm at night, trying to learn to be brave in the dark. Clinging maybe a little.

Matt told him to breathe and just listen. He had to listen.

Sam wasn’t great at picking through the sound of traffic. Wasn’t good at predicting where the bumps were in the sidewalk.

Everything was so dark.

“You’re okay, Sammy,” Matt told him. “Take it easy. Walk easy.”

The blind leading the blind, they were.

He tried to shake the tension out of his shoulder and arms and he loosened his grip on Matt’s arm. Took in a deep breath and let it out.

“Good,” Matt said. “Now, let’s go play in traffic.”

Matt was insistent that Sam learn to adapt to his new way of seeing. He told him all the time that it was a gift. A gift from his mother. Her last legacy. He had to see for her.

Sam learned that Matt’s father had been shot in the head after winning his last boxing match. It had been his legacy for his son. A gift of pride.

Hannah asked him if Daredevil had become his dad and he wasn’t sure how to answer.

Yes and no.

Matt never claimed to be his dad. He never wanted that title. It made him uncomfortable and even joking about it wasn’t that funny given that Matt had been consistently let down by most of his own father figures.

He didn’t want to let Sam down.

He told him this, clutching Sam to his heart after a moment which could have taken either of them.

But at the same time, Matt was there when Mom died and Matt as the one who’d laid next to Sam in bed and smoothed his hair back and listened to him talk in a language that he didn’t understand because Sam couldn’t make the grief happen in English.

Matt was the one who had noticed Sam’s suffering at the beginning of this crazy, stupid journey as well as his potential and he’d been the one in the end who’d done something about both of them.

Matt was the one who had accepted Sam into his made family before Sam had accepted Matt into his.

Matt kept his distance because he’d been burned over and over again and making family was hard for him even though he pretended it was easy.

He gave Sam space and he spoke to him formally and he berated him and played up his Negative Nancy role. He didn’t pity Sam. And he had no time for Sam’s self-pity.

He was a highly emotive person, DD. Who led with his face and with his heart and Sam felt a little like, if he’d known his dad, then that was the kind of dad he’d like to have had.

So while Matt vehemently denied being any kind of father figure, Sam thought quietly and a little guiltily that he kind of had been for a while now.

Foggy said that that was okay and told Sam that he could be his son if he wanted Matt to be his dad figure by proxy and that was kind of how they got around it.

“Yeah, I think he is,” Sam told Hannah who then asked if that meant that he was also her dad by proxy.

Sam reminded her that it kind of didn’t work that way. And anyways, she already had a dad.

“Yeah, but he’s not Daredevil,” she huffed. “Introduce me to _our_ weird Dad, Sam.”

“Sure,” Sam snickered. “As soon as he admits it.”

As soon as hell freezes over.

Hell froze over a few months later when Sam got his ass shot right before Matt and Foggy’s actual proper wedding.

Matt didn’t like it when Sam cried, Sam knew this because all he had to do to get his way was to make a noise like he was gonna start crying and Matt would get anxious and Foggy would tell Sam to stop it and be nice. And like, normally, it was just fun to fuck with the old guy, but Sam couldn’t really help that shit when he got shot through the side. That wasn’t his fault.

But that did little to assuage the old man’s guilt and the old man laid on the floor with him before the bullet came out and afterwards and promised him that he would be okay and smoothed his hair, just as he had the last time. He told Sam that he “can’t fucking die, ya hear? I got all these folks callin’ you my kid and if you die, I’ll be the first suspect.”

Which was about as close to ‘you are my metaphorical son and I fucking _love you_. Please don’t die, okay??’ as they were gonna get.

Which meant that Hannah had finally earned her right to meet the old man.

Matt and Fogs were wedding stressed and Hannah was ‘brother has been shot’ stressed, so Sam figured it was as good a time as any to bring these two halves of his family together.

Hannah’s ‘brother has been shot’ stress faded a lot in the face of the real Daredevil. The other guy running around Hell’s Kitchen was a big man, but he wasn’t Matt. And his name wasn’t fucking Dave, Sam didn’t understand why everyone called this poor man Dave. But regardless, he was big and he could do the classic Daredevil growl and Matt had approved of him carrying his banner for the time being.

But he wasn’t Daredevil. And everyone knew it.

Matt, with his lanky torso and absurdly muscled legs was all Daredevil. He had that kind of dangerous slink to him when he walked, which he chased away from his own shoulders with the movement of his stick. He generally held Sam’s or Foggy’s arm when he walked next to them so he didn’t whack them with the stick, and that also helped disguise his distinctive gait.

But once you knew, there was no going back.

So now that Hannah knew, and she knew who exactly Matt Murdock was, she experienced an emotion that Sam had difficulty pinpointing.

“This is the red dad,” he said, gesturing to Matt. “And this is the cool dad,” he said, gesturing to Foggy. “And this is the cool aunt,” he said, gesturing to Kirsten.

Kirsten waved and Foggy snapped back awake from his daydreams of maiming his mother and sister.

“Oh, hello,” Foggy said.

Hannah gawped at him.

And then at Matt who had lost interest in her the second they’d walked into the place. He was interested in something outside the window. Perking up slowly like a dog.

He cocked his head at it. Foggy punched him in the arm and he came back to earth nicely.

“That’s normal,” Sam told his beloved sibling.

“That’s normal,” Hannah repeated.

“Yes, yes. Red dad. Cool dad. Cool aunt. I said you’d meet them. You’ve met them,” Sam said. “So now, we’re gonna—”

“YOU WERE SHOT,” Hannah observed at max stress.

“Yeah, but I’m not anymore so, we’re gonna—”

“SAMUEL.” Hannah gaped at him now, a mix of stunned and furious.

Yeah, see. This was why they needed to bounce. Hannah saw the fear in his eyes though, and jerked her head to Matt.

“You’re _Daredevil_,” she said. “And you let my brother get shot?”

Matt regained interest in her temporarily. Then lost it. Fleeting, like a bird.

“He didn’t let me get shot, Hannah,” Sam said.

Hannah jabbed a finger at him.

“Huh-uh. You? Silence. Big Red Wolf. You talk. You’re a professional talker, aren’t you?”

Matt was beyond uninterested in her.

“You have a friend,” he told her like that was not the weirdest thing he could possibly have said.

Hannah blinked at him.

“Matt, let’s not,” Foggy said.

“It’s about the size of a cat,” Matt told her reliably.

“Dude, _what_ is the matter with you?” Hannah demanded. “My broth—”

“I think it’s a raccoon, if you’ll excuse me.”

“MATTHEW NO.”

And there went the old guys, one after the other back out the door.

Kirsten beamed after them and then at Hannah who was shell-shocked.

“He’ll bring it back for you, so if you don’t want it in your house you may wanna step outside,” she said sweetly.

Hannah ripped her head over to Sam who, er. Unfortunately knew what Kirsten said to be fact.

“Yeah, uh. Outside,” he encouraged.

“He’s fucking insane,” Hannah informed him.

“He’s super well-meaning,” Sam assured her, shooing her out of the house with him as energetically as he could without jarring his cool new bullet wound.

Hannah watched the comedy duo act that was Nelson & Murdock performing the ever familiar skit “Do not fucking touch the vermin” outside by the oak tree that grew between their condo and their neighbors’.

Matt shimmed his way up to one of the fourth story balconies with ease and secured the raccoon without so much as a hitch. He He skipped back down and offered his prize to Foggy who flinched back from the furious creature, which was not in fact a raccoon but the neighbor’s bowling-ball sized cat.

Seeing as Foggy refused to take it, Matt offered the creature to Sam who similarly knew better than to touch this particular cat and, Matt, having been twice thwarted but undaunted, shoved Kitty into Hannah’s arms with zero remorse and regard for safety.

Hannah stared.

“You’re actually Daredevil,” she said.

Sam sighed.

“Yeah, he’s actually a Daredevil,” he told her. Matt cleared his throat.

“Is that a cat?” he asked. Hannah looked down at the sentient, angry bowling-ball in her arms and looked back up nodding a bit.

Matt cleared his throat again and that’s when Sam saw the hives breaking out on his hands.

“I LOVE her,” Matt was whining at the bowling ball cat who had somehow decided that while everyone else was horrible, he wasn’t so bad.

Matt had taken two antihistamines and was well on the way to a very long nap. Kirsten and Foggy were counting to ten.

“He’s so fucking stupid,” Hannah told Sam in a whisper.

“I can _hear_ you,” Matt whined their way before going back to making kissy noises as the cat.

“Yeah,” Sam said.

“I thought you said—”

“Hey no. Not once, not one single time did I say he was smart. I said he was brilliant and I said he was reckless and compassionate. But not once did I say, out loud, that he was smart,” Sam qualified.

“You lying son of a bitch,” Hannah accused. “Your dad is weird and he’s making you weird too.”

Matt practically hissed at her. She ducked behind Sam.

Sam was kind of immune to that noise by now. Especially since Matt made it at basically anything he didn’t like, which was most things in the universe.

“No, he’s not making me weird. I think he’s just bringing it out,” he observed.

Foggy excused himself to escort his now-sleepy husband to a horizontal surface which was not grass and told Sam not to rush, they’d see him for dinner. Foggy invited Hannah too because he was cordial.

Hannah said she’d think about it.

Matt told her that lying was a sin.

Foggy and Kirsten forcefully guided him away and left Hannah and Sam standing together in what had once been their family apartment. Now it felt more like Hannah’s space.

“Do…” Hannah started. “Do you—are they really your family now?”

Hmmm.

Yeah.

Pretty much.

“You’re not replacing me are you, Sammy?”

“No, of course not,” Sam said with a smile.

Hannah sucked in a breath and nodded and then lightly pressed a hand over his gunshot wound.

“You’re—you’ll be careful, right?” she said. “You’re not Daredevil. He’s—I don’t even know what he is. I honestly think he might be some kind of cryptid—but whatever he is, you’re not that, okay?”

No.

Not yet.

“Sammy.”

“Hannah.”

“Sam, please. Just—can’t you just come home and be normal? Be safe?”

And like.

It was fucked up to say it.

But.

“I’ve never felt safer in my whole life,” Sam told her. “We talked about greencards. They said they’d sponsor me if I ever wanted to try that route. I’d have to go back to China for a while, and it would be scary, but they said they’d help—and I _believe_ them, Hannah. They’d do that for me. And I’ve got this doctor back out west and I’m getting actual, non-menial work experience. And, like. I’m sorry. But it’s safer for me to be with them right now. Bullets and blindness aside.”

He felt really bad about it. She understood though. He could see it in her face.

“I’m sorry,” she sniffed. “I wish I could make you feel safer, Sam.”

It wasn’t her fault. Neither of them had asked for this.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he told her, taking her hands. “We can't be more than we are every day of our lives. Sometimes is okay, but even the strongest of us need a little help sometimes. This is what help looks like for us right now--for me right now. So for now, let's go ahead and give ourselves a minute to breathe, yeah?" 

Hannah swallowed hard. But she set her jaw and tipped her chin up and gave him a nod, strong as he could ever be.

Yeah, they'd be okay.


End file.
